


the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready

by Kaesa



Series: Kaesa's Whumptober 2020 fics [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Betrayal, Body Horror, Fallen Angel Crowley (Good Omens), Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, M/M, Power Imbalance, Torture, Toxic Work Environment, War in Heaven (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27319675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesa/pseuds/Kaesa
Summary: Gadreel has fallen, but he will be made anew as Crawly.  He trusted the wrong person, but he's learned his lesson now.  And Lucifer's forces have been defeated, but someday -- maybe someday soon -- they will win.
Relationships: Crowley/Satan | Lucifer (Good Omens)
Series: Kaesa's Whumptober 2020 fics [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984711
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready

**Author's Note:**

> For Whumptober day 31: Today’s Special: Torture (specifically "experiment").
> 
> This is a companion piece to [here's your shining sword and spear](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27222034) (which is from Crowley's angel friend's point of view) but you don't need to have read that one.

"It's not too late to stay here," Vehuel told Gadreel, and he suppressed an eye roll.

"No, no, I have to go, Lucifer wants me there," he reminded her. "I'm his favorite."

Vehuel was irritated with him, he could sense it easily. She was so ridiculously prudish about him and Lucifer, as she was about everything, as if she and Len always making eyes at each other and vanishing to take their long romantic walks around the galactic center or whatever stupid thing had been objectively less bad, somehow. At least Lucifer was _interesting._ He had ideas, which was more than anybody, even Vehuel, could say about Len. "I'm sure he wouldn't want you to get hurt for his sake, then," said Vehuel, snottily. "Since he likes you so much."

Gadreel suppressed his reaction to that; it wasn't Lucifer's _fault_ he sometimes got hurt, it was only that Lucifer trusted him to do dangerous jobs and not whine about it if things got a little hairy, and she was envious of that. "I'll be _fine,_ " he said. "And besides," he added, trying to make peace, "I'd love to see the look on that wanker Gabriel's face when we storm in and take Heaven. Aren't you looking forward to that?"

"Yeah, I guess," she said, not sounding as enthusiastic as he would've hoped. "I'm just worried something bad will happen to you."

Poor Vehuel; she was always so concerned about everyone but herself. Gadreel knew things would be all right, though. It was a good thing Vehuel had him around, really, otherwise she'd never get anything done. "Besides, God told you not to worry, didn't She?" Tormenting Vehuel with that never got old; it was the only thing God had said to her, and of course, she'd worried about it a _lot_ since then.

She snorted. "I thought we were disobeying Her now?" she asked.

"I'm just saying," he said. "Anyway, why don't you lend me some of your eyes? Then I could see trouble coming." God had run out of eyes when She was making him, so he barely had any compared to Vehuel. Well, no, he had seven at this point, but only because he'd bothered Vehuel until she'd shared her bounty of eyes with him early on in their existence.

Her halo flared, which it always did when she felt very strongly about something, and she drew her wings over herself. "I really don't want to, sorry. I'm kind of worried I won't be able to take care of myself?"

"What? No! Why?" he asked, because Vehuel had a lot of flaws, but if there was anybody who could take care of herself, it was Vehuel. She'd saved him from falling into the sun once! And she'd stopped a wayward comet from striking the Earth at the last minute, sacrificing her wings! (Then some officious bastard from Heaven had yelled at her, because it was _supposed_ to hit the Earth, apparently, and nobody'd told them. Heaven was so useless.) And she'd always jumped between him and people who were trying to push him around, which was a little embarrassing, but also... well, it was nice, to know somebody cared that much about you. "You're bigger and meaner than me," he pointed out, "I need the eyes more."

"No, you're definitely meaner than me," she said. "Remember what you did to poor Len?"

Len had broken her heart, _and_ he'd ruined those two gas giants, from what Vehuel told him. Of course, her account was very biased, because she still loved Len, but Gadreel could see through all that. "He _deserved_ it! It was justice. It's not really meanness if it's deserved, is it?"

"I don't think anyone _really_ deserves to be tied to a comet and left for a few million years until he's missed at the next all hands meeting," Vehuel said, because sometimes she wasn't any fun at all.

"Sure they do!" he said. Especially if they were Len, who had been laughing at her behind her back and making up stories about her, and Gadreel wasn't going to tell her that, but when she found out hopefully she would beat Len up and he'd be very sorry. "Anyway, you're still bigger than me."

"By a _smidge,_ Gadreel, it won't matter if either of us has to fight -- I don't know, Michael or someone like that. Listen, how about you stay in front and I go behind you and watch out for anyone trying to sneak up. We'll work together," she said, brightly.

"Oh, fine," he said, rolling his eyes. "But you'd better pay attention." She would; he was just being an arse about it.

"I'm not gonna let anything happen to you!"

"You'd better not," he said. "I won't let you forget it if you do."

"I know, that's why," she said, and she shoved him. "You'll be fucking insufferable for eternity otherwise."

That, at least, was something he was great at. "I'm going to be fucking insufferable for eternity anyway," he assured her.

On the long flight to Heaven he felt her rage; her halo was bright, and you just couldn't hide feelings that strong, no matter how you tried. But he had assumed it was anger with Heaven -- against their cruelties and injustices, and the stupid rules they'd make up whenever something wasn't going their way, and how boring and bland they were -- and he'd let his anger mix with hers; a silent _yes, I agree; yes, we will fix this; God made us and She will regret it because we may be small but we are clever and angry and a force to be reckoned with._

Having her behind him made him confident, and gave him the courage to launch himself at the first Heavenly angel they came upon. He knew what he was doing; knew how to disrupt the delicate balance of the archangel's gravity and collapse her in upon herself so that she couldn't attack them, and he knew with Vehuel behind him, the archangel couldn't possibly get at him first.

But then a terrible feeling -- _pain --_ spread across his body, before the archangel even noticed anything amiss, and Gadreel looked back, only to see Vehuel holding something long and sharp; a line of pure force. It glowed with a light that was not Lucifer's, but God's.

He stared at her; stared at the thing she held. She must have been carrying it this whole time, and it _hurt_ , and she had used it to hurt him, and --

A seraph bumped into her, and Gadreel used the moments to gather himself together and hide from her. Had she... had she been angry at _him_ all along? He watched her throughout the battle, keeping his distance, keeping away from her, and saw her slash at all their friends -- well, all _his_ friends, they hadn't really liked her -- had she been envious, maybe, that he'd had other friends? Was that it? And then he saw her speeding towards Lucifer, something bright clutched in her hands, and Gadreel knew that she must hate all of them so much to put herself in danger from a _fucking supernova_ just to kill everyone else. He sped away before the flash of heat and light, and avoided any damage, but he saw her, furious and hurting and burning as Heaven's forces dragged her off the battlefield.

* * *

Vehuel's trick with the supernova hadn't killed Lucifer, but it had cost him a lot of his forces, and Heaven -- who had been outnumbered at first, because apparently half of them were stuck in a meeting with Gabriel -- had defeated them easily after that. God, in Her infinite cruelty, had relegated them to some lower place, some other plane, which was somehow both uncomfortably chilly and unbearably hot at the same time. Gadreel lay in that place, having barely made it out of the pit of boiling sulfur. Everything hurt, and he felt bound by gravity, of all the stupid things, and the spiral of his body was unwinding as he made his way away from the lake of sulfur, pulling himself with his hands.

Gadreel could see others crawling out of the sulfur around him, and a few even still falling into the lake with horrendous splashes. "Come on, come on, get moving!" snarled somebody, and Gadreel thought she looked like one of the cherubim who'd been at some of Lucifer's meetings. He couldn't remember her name, but he was pretty sure she hadn't had scales before. It was clear she thought she was very important, on account of being a cherub, and Gadreel instantly disliked her.

Still, she seemed to know what was going on. "What's happening?" he asked. "Can you help me? I think I'm... broken," he said. Ugh, his whole core was trying to stay curled, but he'd been absolutely maimed so it was just lolling out weirdly to the side. It wasn't comfortable at all.

"No! Too much to do," she said. "And besides, that would be counterproductive. We're supposed to be being _evil_ now," she said, sniffing.

"Evil?" The concept was foreign to Gadreel, and he waited a few moments for it to filter into his understanding. "That's stupid, though, isn't it? God kicks us out and claims to be Good so we've got to be Evil in defiance?"

"Yeah, that's right," said the cherub. Well, obviously not a cherub anymore. What was her name? Dagana, that was it. Something like that. Ugh. When had she got _scales?_ "What's wrong with that?"

"Well, isn't it playing right into God's hands? If we really wanted to stick it to Her shouldn't we be _Good?_ " he asked.

Maybe-Dagana scowled at him, and shoved him along with several clammy hands. He hissed in pain as the edges of his being scraped against the rough rock of the cavern. "Get moving!" she snarled. "Line starts back there!" She pointed to a line that was already forming; it looked like Gadreel had a ways to go before he could even start waiting for... whatever was happening.

People around him were chattering about _names_ , about _forms,_ and Gadreel had thought those things weren't supposed to matter anymore, like ranks -- or, well, they wouldn't have, had Lucifer won. Perhaps that was why they still did. They seemed pretty cheery about it on the surface, but all Gadreel could sense was other people's pain, and impatience with the line, and their anger at God. "What's this about getting a new name?" he asked the person in front of him.

"Oh, you don't know?" they said. "Satan's remaking us."

"S..." He hesitated on the sibilance. "Satan?"

"The _Adversary_ of God! Lucifer is an old name," they informed him, cheerfully.

Gadreel didn't really like where all this new branding was headed. It seemed awfully God-reliant, and he didn't much fancy being on Team Hello, We Lost To God. Lucifer could explain it to him, though, he was certain of it. They'd probably misinterpreted everything he'd said, Gadreel decided. Lucifer had this way of making complicated things easy to understand, but unfortunately that meant sometimes the morons got it all turned around when they passed it on.

"Do you... do you _want_ a new name?" he asked his new comrade.

"Well, why wouldn't I? God gave me this one, it's bad news. Stands to reason."

"Yeah. Yeah, no, got to get away from that rubbish," Gadreel agreed.

"Although I did hear he made somebody called Leonard keep his name," they added. "Feel a bit sorry for _that_ poor bastard."

"Oh, Len's an arsehole, if anyone deserves to be stuck with the name God gave them it's him." He warmed to his subject, appreciating something to be furious about that he wasn't personally still wounded from. "D'you know what he did to my friend?" he asked. And then he remembered.

"What?" they asked.

"He..." Gadreel didn't have the heart. "He... Nothing. Nothing, he didn't do anything to any friends of mine. But he's a bastard, steer clear."

"Well, all right, if you say so," they said.

The line was interminable and Gadreel grew more and more miserable by the hour. Occasionally he tried to convince some of the people in front of him that he was actually Lucifer's favorite and should be allowed past them. Sure, he wasn't the _only_ of Lucifer's favorites, but Gadreel knew he was Lucifer's _favorite_ favorite. He could tell. Lucifer cared greatly for him, and would want to know he had survived. But they all laughed at him and told him everybody said that, and so, Gadreel stayed in the line, crawling gradually past deep pits so black it hurt to look into them, and rivers of pitch.

Finally, _finally_ he came to the front of the line, and there was Lucifer, sitting on a throne in front of a great ocean of molten lava. He was beautiful still, but there was something... slightly off about him now. Gadreel couldn't pinpoint what it was, exactly; he didn't see any specific difference. Maybe he was imagining things. He didn't seem to be leaking light anymore, although Gadreel could see a trickle of it leading to a larger puddle, which -- oh. Which had flowed into the lava -- had maybe made the lava?

That was a lot of light he'd lost. No wonder he looked different. Gadreel felt awful now, acting like his own wounds were all that serious.

Gadreel made his way painfully to a spot at the base of the throne. "Gadreel," said Lucifer, scintillating with what looked like approval.

But it was approval Gadreel couldn't _feel_ anymore, and he wondered if he'd done something wrong. And he realized he _had_ ; he'd vouched for Vehuel, like a gullible idiot, and --

"Come here," said Lucifer, gently, reaching out a hand large enough to encompass galaxies, and Gadreel remembered what it was to trust again. "You're very upset."

"We _lost,_ " said Gadreel. "We lost and it's --"

"Your fault. Yes, in a way," he said, cradling Gadreel.

Gadreel, who had been barely hanging onto some important pieces of himself this whole time, almost wished he had shaken apart on the way down. "I. I'm sorry."

"We all are," said Lucifer, gently. "But sorry doesn't _do_ anything, does it? Still. I'm here to put you back together, and I'm sure you can work to --"

"Yes! To make things right!" said Gadreel.

Lucifer laughed, and it sounded wrong. "Oh no, haven't you heard?" he asked, with that sort of glimmer that meant he was going to say something that Gadreel understood, and most people did not. "We're in the business of making things wrong now." And Gadreel, for the first time, didn't understand it; there was a joke in it, somewhere, but -- "But we don't really have time to discuss all of that, do we? I'm going to have to remake you." And without waiting for an answer, he seized Gadreel by his central spiral -- the one that had been hurting him so much all this time, because it was very much not in the center of him like it was supposed to be -- and _yanked._

Gadreel thought he had known pain when Vehuel had carved him up, and then he thought he'd _understood_ pain when he fell into the pit of boiling sulfur, and in the hours after that, he'd assumed he had become used to pain, waiting in the line for Lucifer to see to his wounds, but none of that was true, it turned out, because none of that pain was in any way comparable to having your very essence pulled out and your whole self unspooled in Lucifer's hands. Lucifer chuckled to himself. "Most people scream when I do that," he said, pleasantly, as if it was a funny little joke.

Gadreel had been too startled to scream at first, and then in too much pain after to make any sort of sound, and now that Lucifer was _twisting_ him and laying him out and tugging him this way and that, ripping him to pieces and smoothing over the rips with careful fingers digging into his being. It was all he could do to just hang onto existence.

He didn't say anything; he didn't trust himself not to say the wrong thing. Lucifer laughed again, and Gadreel realized he didn't _need_ to say anything; Lucifer could see right through him, see everything about him. He was reminded of the times he'd communed celestially with Lucifer, and it had been -- it had been so _much_ , he had never been able to see all of Lucifer's thoughts, but Lucifer had come away understanding him better than he understood himself. Only this time he couldn't see into Lucifer at _all,_ and he was completely at Lucifer's mercy.

He shivered, and pain shot through him in all the places Lucifer had wrenched apart or pushed together.

"What shall I name you?" Lucifer asked, several eyes looking him over impassively. He felt strange and hollow. He felt wrong. Lucifer watched him become tangled in on himself and untied him patiently, saving him from himself. "Hmm. How about Crawly? It's very descriptive."

"Crawly," said... Crawly. It was a fitting name, he told himself. It was the _right_ name. Lucifer, his friend and leader, had given it to him, not God the tyrant.

"I'm glad you like it," said Lucifer. He grasped Crawly around the middle and plunged him into the pool of lava in front of him, and all the pain he'd felt in the process of being remade repeated itself, but worse. He was in agonies for what felt like days, years, centuries... and then Lucifer pulled him out again and placed him gently on the ground. "I will find you when I need you, Crawly," he said, and then he was left to slither off, and Lucifer had moved on to tend to the next of his fallen army.

* * *

When Lucifer needed him next, Crawly had already been bullied into doing a lot of fetching and carrying for other people. Bigger, stronger people; mostly ones who still had limbs, and could therefore both fetch and carry more easily than Crawly. He learned many things in this period; he learned that sometimes bits of the outside of himself would slough off, but that there was more new Crawly underneath and that he wasn't actually dying. He learned that people didn't like it when he called Lucifer Lucifer, and they didn't believe him when he said he'd worked with Lucifer, or done special, important things for him. He learned, also, that God had cut them all off from Her love, which was fine, because who wanted it anyway? Several people theorized that this was why none of them could feel each others' joy anymore; several others, more morosely, suggested that perhaps they had lost the capacity for joy. But they would win it back, of course, when they overthrew God later.

Later couldn't come soon enough for Crawly; he was cold all the time, and he missed his halo.

Eventually, Lucifer found him. He looked different now; he wore the form of -- was it a human? It might be. Crawly hadn't seen the designs up close, but he'd heard them described, although the rumor mill in Heaven wasn't always very reliable. Whatever his shape, though, he was Lucifer, and it was a relief to see him again. Crawly felt a jolt of affection for Lucifer, that he should stoop to taking the form of something so weak just for fun, and he slithered up to Lucifer eagerly. "I have sssome problemsss," he said.

Lucifer bared his teeth in a way that Crawly thought was a smile. "I have some solutions! Why don't we find out if they match up with your problems?" And he picked Crawly up and wrapped him around his person, and for the first time since the war, Crawly felt _safe._ Safety was oddly nervewracking, but it was still such a relief to feel it.

Lucifer took him to a private, quiet place, then, and reshaped him once more, breathing him gently into a form much like his own. It hurt less than being remade, but Crawly was pretty sure he'd got something wrong about the hips, because they didn't feel very sturdy.

As soon as he mentioned that, Lucifer had insisted on testing the form out, making sure that it worked, because, he explained, he was going to be the _first_ demon sent up to Earth to cause problems for God. Filled with pride, Crawly tried his very best; if he could do what Lucifer asked of him, maybe he could be instrumental in winning their next fight with Heaven.

The tests could be fun; Crawly found that sometimes he enjoyed the human equivalent of celestial communion, for all that it was much less overpowering than the real thing. But sometimes his human body would begin to fall apart, when Lucifer pushed him too far. Lucifer reminded him that there was value in knowing these limits; it was much better for him to know when the body would fail _before_ taking it out into the field.

But a lot of the tests were pretty tedious, and Crawly hadn't liked them at all. Being strangled, for example, hadn't been any fun at all, and drowning had been _awful_. Lucifer had insisted on doing that five or six times, because he was certain he'd done something wrong with the way the lungs connected up to the mouth, but it turned out humans were just laid out very strangely. "Gabriel designed them," Crawly reminded him, and this earned him warm laughter and burning fingers threaded through his new hair, a lovely sensation, before Lucifer pushed his head under the water another time, just to be sure.

Crawly still wasn't entirely sold on this whole _being evil to contradict God_ thing -- if they were going to be _evil_ , it should be for its own sake, shouldn't it? -- but Lucifer had explained to him that there was going to be a rematch, another war, which they'd win handily if only they worked at doing everything they could to thwart God's plans, to weaken and demoralize Her forces and their resolve, and Crawly thought he understood it better now. So when Lucifer declared that his body was probably working well enough to head up to Earth, Crawly had been eager to get started.

"What do I do now?" he asked, wide-eyed.

Lucifer raised a gentle hand to caress Crawly's face, and Crawly was _almost,_ not quite but _almost_ over the shock of not feeling his affection viscerally. This touch, Crawly told himself, this gentleness... it would have to be enough, for now. "You get up there," he said, "and make some trouble."


End file.
